Governance of Academia: An Interview with Carlos van Eck
By Magdalena Styś | News | December 10, 2025
Cover Illustration: FIGHT FOR A BETTER TOMORROW, 2019. Markus Spiske / Unsplash
UvA student Carlos van Eck publicly applied to the Executive Board Chair role to spark debate on the university’s decision-making processes and policies. Reporter Magdalena Styś interviews him to learn more about his experiences.
What makes for a good university? Is it intellectual rigor? Is it inclusivity within its student and faculty bodies? Is it ethical conduct of research projects? Is it, perhaps, some combination of the three?
What about democratic governance?
Since Edith Hooge’s resignation in August, the University of Amsterdam has been looking for a new Chair of the Executive Board (CvB, from the Dutch College van Bestuur). The Executive Board is responsible for university-wide policymaking on diversity and accessibility, for determining tuition fees and for deciding which study programmes will be discontinued. The Executive Board is appointed by the UvA Supervisory Board, which itself is appointed directly by the Dutch Minister of Education, Culture and Science. In other words: the UvA is home to approximately 44,000 students and 6,000 staff members, none of whom have a say in who governs the institution that de facto shapes their lives. While students can, to some extent, affect the university policy via the Student Councils, the current governance model relies on student and staff co-determination (medezeggenschap) rather than full determination (zeggenschap).
To bring attention to the undemocratic way the UvA is governed, Carlos van Eck, a 25-year-old History student at UvA, made an announcement that he applied for the CvB chair position. However, on Nov. 17, 2025, it was made public that the UvA will not be moving forward with the application. A few weeks prior, the Amsterdammer sat down with van Eck to talk about governance at the UvA and his experiences with the CvB application process.
“So I decided to run, in the sense that I applied for this position and I did it very openly, so that we can get some eyes on this process, because the most important people at the university are mostly unknown by the university, by university students and staff themselves.”
Problems with the Executive Board
Whether it’s regarding climate policy, regulations on foreign collaborations or managing university canteens, the CvB routinely gives the students reasons to criticize their policies. Van Eck cites this tension between the management and the students as the reason for his public candidacy:
“I’ve been at the university for quite a long time […] and I’ve seen it from the inside and the outside, how it acts and how it responds to whatever happens here. I’ve seen students demanding, for example, that the university has a better climate policy, that the university does not correspond [sic] with the genocide in Gaza, that the university should provide better food arrangements or housing policy. And whenever you confront them, it’s never a yes. But it’s never a no either. It’s always a ‘we will look at it’. So I decided to run, in the sense that I applied for this position and I did it very openly, so that we can get some eyes on this process, because the most important people at the university are mostly unknown by the university, by university students and staff themselves.”
(Un)Democratic governance?
In a manner antithetical to democratic ideals, many universities are currently shifting toward New Public Management, a model that aims to bring tactics from the corporate sector – such as increased privatization and competition – into the management of public services. Van Eck believes that this phenomenon is present at the UvA as well:
“The university is completely beholden as a corporate entity […] Students are consumers of education, everything needs to be as efficient as possible. And [the administration] only looks at the numbers and the statistics on the screen and not at actual students who actually exist at this university.”
Although an alternative model of university governance might seem unorthodox to those who only have experience with the Dutch higher education system, there is precedence for such models elsewhere. At Polish universities, for instance, the Rector and the members of the university Senate are elected by the Electoral College, composed of staff, students and doctoral students. While this system still doesn’t give every student a direct way to influence the electoral process, it’s certainly closer to full student and staff determination (zeggenschap) than the one currently in place at the UvA.
Applying for the CvB Chair position
Writing cover letters is both difficult to master and frequently taught in student career workshops. These workshops, however, usually provide tips on how to write cover letters for internships and graduate degree admissions, not for the position of Chair of the university Executive Board. Asked about how he’d like to see the UvA management transformed, van Eck referred to the cover letter he attached to his CvB Chair application:
“I think most importantly we should stop any ties with Israeli institutions. We should improve education and housing, shape the university together with students and teachers to actually see what works best in academic practice. I think the university should not make excuses for its behavior on the campus, like sending police to beat up students in 2024. I also think we need to democratize the university […] not selling the other university buildings anymore, getting more student housing, getting more student resources, actually fixing the board grants for certain board positions and making sure that students get a little bit more money for their massively important volunteer work. Canteen prices are also an issue.”
Student voices on university governance
It would be difficult to fight for the expansion of democracy without listening to the cornerstone of any democratic system: the people. In November, the Activistenpartij (AP) held a public event in the Roeterseiland ABC building. AP members stood in the building hallway and encouraged students to voice their ideas about the policies they would implement if they were in charge of the Executive Board. Here’s how van Eck summarized the students’ responses:
“The BSA, the binding study advice – people want to abolish that. People talk a lot about food, about more transparency, more funding for humanities. There’s no contemplation room in the main buildings at Roeterseiland campus. Cut ties, not budgets. Cut ties, not courses. There’s a lot of different things people want. And I think [students] also realize that we could have those things but the people who decide this are completely unaccountable, completely out of sight.”
Whether it’s changing the BSA policy, cutting ties with Israeli institutions or improving the canteen, the students clearly have ideas on how to make their university a better place – but is there a way to make these ideas come to fruition without consistent student involvement in university governance?
After a call for a free Palestine, van Eck ended the interview with a reminder that the struggle for a democratic university is not something that can be achieved through one person’s public awareness campaign, but is a topic that requires the involvement of the entire university community:
“I think this is an issue for everyone. We all need to come together. It’s also not only Dutch students or international students – all students need to know this and I invite all of them to do it.”
Magdalena Styś is a university student in Amsterdam. The views expressed here are not necessarily those of The Amsterdammer.
